Join me on my quest to learn the coveted art of spriting! I'll post my projects here for critiquing. I would appreciate advice and suggestions for improvement. If you take it upon yourself to edit them please post your changes so I might learn from your work.

This is where I started, simply editing Jot5 Oracle sprites. A drastic change to the color pallet to make the hair white. Even my first endeavor taught me that portraits are much more difficult than full-body sprites, due to color limitations. How do you think they turned out?

My next work was choosing which sprite to use for my personal hack. I decided to use Bart from Jot5, but I personally didn't think the portrait matched without a cape. So i did a pretty major overall of the portrait. I'm mostly concerned if the colors aren't defined enough and if the cape over the shoulders looks alright. On the left is the original and to the right is my edit.

I have begun a few frankenspriting attemps, but making the colors work has made me scrape most. Still one is turning out well, i think, so it might be my next post. Simple stuff for now but I hope to be good enough to fulfill some requests some day.

I've actually always found portraits to be much easier than sprites, but everybody has their strengths and weaknesses.

When it comes to white hair, remember that FFT portraits have a warm tone that's matched from the background color, so rather than flat white, it looks better to go with a strongly white tinted tan. It's not a thing most people notice, but it stands out to me, if nothing else.

I'd also go with a less sharp contrast; deepen the mid tones to bring out the texture and not come out quite so harsh on the shades. I know that can be kind of a tall order with a limited palette, but it's not impossible. Twin frequently blows my mind with what he does in 15 colors or less.

Modding version: PSX

* Angel should quit being a lazy bitch<@Elric> I agree to that as well

Thanks for the reply Angel! That makes sense, a tan color would be more natural with skin than the silver I currently have. Shouldn't be hard to change so I'll get on that soon. And yeah so far i find full body sprites to need less shading detail in general so for "small" edits they're easier to me. Of course getting animations looking nice is a struggle I'll be experiencing eventually haha, and that will be challenging!

So I noticed a couple mistakes in my original edit and decided to redo it. Here's my results. I had to make some compromises because of color limit (one big one *nervous chuckle*) but hopefully they aren't too noticeable.

Hex Mage F

Also do the color palettes look nice? They're meant to be a bit darker than standard for my other jobs.

Sorry I've been sluggish with any progress, lots on my mind this past week or so. Anyway I've been approaching this from two different angles; pasting over a head and editing finer details, and changing a sprites clothing to resemble another's but keep the original form. The second option is proving quite the hassle so the former held my attention today. Couldn't finish before work, but here's a sample. Thoughts before I finish it?

Sorry I've been sluggish with any progress, lots on my mind this past week or so. Anyway I've been approaching this from two different angles; pasting over a head and editing finer details, and changing a sprites clothing to resemble another's but keep the original form. The second option is proving quite the hassle so the former held my attention today. Couldn't finish before work, but here's a sample. Thoughts before I finish it?

We already have a full sheet that looks like that somewhere on the forum

Modding version: PSX

<@Angel> Teach a man to fish and he'll open up a fishery to compete against yours.

Ah I was mixing two red mages, but I'll take another look if it's been done then. Saves me time so thanks!

EDIT: I spent the last hour rummaging through the wiki and forum spriting sections without a perfect match. Maybe i'm just missing it? Or it could be one of the sheets I'm mixing, I'll post them. It's just a head (most importantly hat <3 ) change so it's not super noticeable.

Red mage or Rad_mage by Rathaelos (Timbo also did an edited version)

Red mage by Lijj

I love the aesthetic of Rathaelos' and adore the hat and hair from Lijj's, so i tried my hand at either giving Lijj's the other's clothes or Rath's the other's head. Head swaps aren't too hard so i started with that option.

EDIT: I went ahead and finished the big edits. Smaller things and the portrait would still need to be finished. While working I realized that I may have placed the heads quite accurately but I didn't consider the difference in head/hair shape and size. Because of that I had to rework the shoulders/neck of a few poses. Also a darker color on the hat drew from a color used by the portrait rather than the body palette, so that would also require fixing. While not a complete success I believe it was good practice for me. I don't think it necessary to put anymore time into beautifying or correcting it though. In the future I'll pay more mind to sprite compatibility and resizing pieces as needed.

UPDATE: I think another frankeinsprite would be good practice. I can't try to move too fast when I'm still making mistakes. I'll pick something soon, but if someone wants to present me a challenge, a test if you will, I'll accept it gladly . Just don't expect anything to use in game from me quite yet; unless It's just a big palette change, I'm feeling pretty comfortable with color limitations by now.

Just a small project for my hack. I was planning to make Beowulf's boring skillset into a unique Death knight. So he's getting zombified! I just wanted opinions on the portrait. Should I go handsome undead or wrinkled zombie? Alternatively i could try a pale vampire look.

EDIT: Added some Red variants (the right column). The bottom is Original Beo for reference and to his right is a paler Vampire skin. Personally I'm digging the Vamp, but he doesn't scream Death Knight quite like a gray, wrinkled corpse. Which will be the face of ZomBeowulf?

UPDATE: Thanks for the opinions you guys. I'm going with Count Beowulf for now. Finding a good shade of otherworldly pale skin took a surprising amount of time (or I'm still bad ) but besides that this has been very simple. Anyway below are spritesheets of BW: the top has only skin changes, the bottom has hair, clothes, and eyes changes. Not sure if red and black are the best but *shrugs* I could also rework the hair and ascot colors, but that would recquire additional work in other areas. What would you guys want to see or is it good as is?

Decided on my next franken attempt and finished the concept. I've been thinking of making Malek and Rafa more Ninja like (due to their abilities heavily resembling ninjutsu and me replacing ninja job with Assassin in my patch (but that's a different topic)). Anyway i started with Malek so here's some basic poses.

To my joy I found their head sizes and placement are almost perfect matches, so far anyway. So it's been exceedingly easy. Now it's not all peaches. In the 4th pose Mal's head is actually 1 pixel higher than the Hanzo sprite i'm pasting over. I'm undecided on lowering it and rearranging ninja's shoulders, carefully editing the head, or leaving it 1 pixel higher than the others. *EDIT: I took a second look and realized that entire pose is just 1 pixel higher anyway. Whether that was intentional idk but i can easily lower it if it causes issues with the end product* Besides that there is 1 (probably 2 or even 3 if i'm crafty) unused/redundant unnecessary colors. Opinions and advice are always welcome!

EDIT: I was crafty and made room for 3 more colors. For some reason this bluish-gray color held my attention. Added it below the original concept, also lowered that pose to align with the others. Now that the colors are set finishing edits shouldn't take more than a day or two!

UPDATE: Finished most of the heads. Roughly halfway done. Too tired to finish it now. Some help spot checking animations after I attach the finished .bmp would be appreciated

UPDATE: Took longer than I had hoped but here is one shadow warrior Malek! Ran through the Shishi animations and he still looked good, so dare I say this project was a success? A second spot check or fine edits (if needed) would be welcome Out of the 12 or so projects i've tried (most not posted here) I'm most happy and proud of this, one step closer to attempting my own custom sprite. Much thanks to Celdia for the Hanzo i used as a base.

If you clarify what you'd like done with that sprite I'll gladly take a shot at it . It's in the old Shishi format but that's easy to fix. I'm pretty busy this weekend but I'll squeeze in what time I can.

My next notable project will be finishing/editing a sprite which was never submitted, lost in the forum. It is also a monster sprite; which I haven't touched yet, so it will be doubly challenging and great practice.

Good I have other request can modify this sprite and change the hair color to gray(marshal sprite)

* Marshal.bmp (123.05 kB, 256x488 - viewed 3

1) You need to figure out how to copy/paste correctly, as you copy/pasted the name and view count, but didnt link the image.

2) This is not a request thread and most requests are not fulfilled. I'm not going to allow you to keep making requests in the wrong place simply to take advantage of 1 active spriter who is still learning all the ropes. If you have a request, put it in the sprite request thread like everyone else.

3) You need to learn how to do these things yourself. No one is here to hold anyones hand, we are a hacking/modding site centered on gaming, not a gaming site centered on modding/hacking. There are tutorials as well as other tools provided that you can utilize to achieve what you need.

4) Sprite requests are usually made by someone who actually has something to use them in. You don't ask for requests for your own personal work that isn't going to be released on the site, as it defeats the purpose of someone helping you.

« Last Edit: August 24, 2017, 03:05:51 AM by Elric »

Modding version: PSX

<@Angel> Teach a man to fish and he'll open up a fishery to compete against yours.

Thanks for laying down the law Boss. I absolutely agree with everything Elric said. I did decide to help you out though Dell. I'm pretty sure this is the sprite you meant and I picked out a decent gray for you and left a few examples for you, should be easy to finish.

I'll also give a few tips i learned in tutorials and from my own practice. In Tactics we are limited to 16 colors per palette, and 1 of those has to be the background color so really it's only 15 colors. Another color is usually a very dark shading so more accurately 14 colors are freely usable (although the shading color can double with black as I did in my Ninja Malek, hardly noticeable). In Tactics you'll notice most characters have blond hair and light skin. That is because their hair and skin share some colors to compensate for the color limit. In this sprite you'll notice that to change the hair color I had it share colors with the armor. In a few poses the shoulder pauldrons touch the hair, so i made small edits to keep them more distinct from each other. I also didn't touch the portrait, but let me warn you that portrait and sprite body colors should never be the same. If you want help finding colors for the portrait pm me, keep it out of this thread please. I'll also say that to add extra color you can probably cut the darkest red and recolor those parts with the shading color, you can likely also cut one of the less-used skin/old hair colors.

Lastly I'll say that I use an awesome app called Graphicsgale for most of my edits so far. Just Google it. And again to emphasize Elric's point to try learning yourself like I am. Check in the tutorials and best of luck!